First, the bankroll, because this column runs on transparency and grief: lifetime, your Cousin Cal is down 61.5 units. I have made peace with it. The units have made peace with it. My reads were right more often than the results were, which any veteran of the sweat will tell you is somehow worse, and if you don't understand that, congratulations on your happiness.

But it's launch day. New site, fresh page in the ledger, and every future on the board is priced by a bookmaker who exists — and I want to be clear about this, because the league office keeps asking — entirely in my head. The office has declined to sanction a book fourteen consecutive times, which I choose to read as a negotiation. Here's the opening board for 2026. Lines are mine. Leans are free. Consequences are yours.

1. Ben Cunnion, Auction three-peat: +475. Three rings in the last six seasons — 2020, 2024, 2025 — and the last one from the four-seed at 8-6, beating three higher seeds in three weeks. My analytics colleague will tell you that's three coin flips. Beautiful. Show me another guy in this league whose coin does that. I'm not proud of this, but I'm in for 2 units.

2. Evan Sinn season win total: UNDER 9.5. The books — again, me — hung this number off the 11-3 record. But I watched the whole tape, and the all-play was 73-81. That's a below-average team that hit every green light in town. The lights change, folks. The under is family, and this is the family reunion.

3. Nick Inman, first career title: +650. Scoring champ at 2,049.08, first final of his life, and then a 152.88-to-104.70 education in December. Cursed results, clean process — that's the profile I've been betting my whole life, mostly because it's mine. A respectful 1 unit, and if he benches Christian McCaffrey money to keep the young guys, make it 2.

4. Elliott Simmonds, Dynasty points title repeat: -125. The man scored 2,179.74 — most in the league — went 131-51 in all-play, best in the league, and missed the playoffs at 7-7. The most points and nothing to show for it. That's not a team, that's a bad beat with a roster, and I will be betting on it out of respect. Laying the juice, 2 units. The bad-beat brotherhood protects its own.

5. Brian Jones, Dynasty worst-to-playoffs: +425. Went 3-11, dead last, scored the fewest points in the league — and walks into the rookie draft holding three first-round picks, per the trade log, in a class with a consensus stud at the top. When the worst team at the table gets dealt three aces, you don't ask how its year went. Half a unit, plus another half on principle.

6. Justin Waitt, Dynasty repeat: +550. PASS. Nothing personal — 10-4, a 152.60 in the final, deserving champ. But he sold his first- and second-round picks to get the ring, and champions with no picks are like guys who cash out and stay at the table. I've been that guy. The table remembers.

7. The free money: Topher McBoyle launch-week bylines, OVER 2.5. He's got two up by lunch on day one. This is the closest thing to a fixed race this league offers — the man is chasing a national desk like it owes him units. Max bet, which in this column means 3. If the league office objects to this market, it knows exactly who to have call me.

8. The Bad Beat Memorial, inaugural inductee: Week 13, Auction. Brian Jones puts up a respectable 88.44 and loses to Evan Sinn's 88.62. Eighteen-hundredths of a point. That's not a margin, that's a paper cut that costs you a playoff seed. Same man also hung the season-high 209.44 in Week 10 and still went home in round one — to the eventual champ, naturally, because the universe has a sense of structure. Brian, the brotherhood sees you. First round's on the bankroll, which is to say, it's on credit.

The one I beg you not to copy: Kevin Jones, ring number four, +700. The record book says three apiece at the top now, Kevin and Cunnion, and history hates a tie. This is a narrative bet. Narrative bets are how I got to minus 61.5. I'm in for half a unit. Do as I say, not as I sweat.

The season's a ways off. The board will move. The office will not sanction it. And somewhere out there is one league member — just one, that's all I need — willing to take the other side of a single one of these numbers. My white whale. You know where the Feed is.

Odds courtesy of Cal's Book, an institution that is not real, is not sanctioned, and is not, per the league office, “to be printed.” Too late.